


More Than Just a Cup of Tea

by tenscupcake



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Post-Episode: s03e09 Family of Blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-15 22:39:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5803063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenscupcake/pseuds/tenscupcake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the ordeal with the Family of Blood, the Doctor has something important to tell Martha.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Than Just a Cup of Tea

**Author's Note:**

> No, this is not a Ten/Martha fic... I learned something cool today, that a '/' between characters means it is a romantic or sexual relationship, and a '&' means it's platonic. Woo!!
> 
> This is me working through my anger with this horrendous story arc. Just a little blurb on what might have happened once they were back on the TARDIS. I really enjoyed exploring this actually. S3!Ten is such a different man from the S2!Ten I normally write. And Martha is just such a fucking rockstar honestly she deserves some penmanship from me. 
> 
> Some Ten/Rose is implied but I didn't think it was enough to stick it in the tag!

Martha wakes before the shrill ring of her alarm clock, even before the shouting of the matron that she’s lazy and useless for still being in bed. She dreads to open her eyes, to be greeted by only the peeling and molding walls and rotting wood armoire of her tiny attic of a room. But as she wriggles around on her bed, waiting for the moment the ringing or the clanging will force her to leave the solitude of her blankets, it feels… different. The hard wooden frame doesn’t creak when she moves, and springs aren’t digging into her back; the mattress is soft and conforming.

OH!

Her eyes fly open.

Soft artificial light from the sentient lamp on the nightstand slowly illuminates the lavender ceiling overhead as she wakes. She grins up at the ceiling, and then at the lamp, and takes in the rest of her surroundings as the memories flood back to her.

They aren’t in 1910’s England anymore. She’s in her room on the TARDIS.

With a contented sigh, she sits up and snuggles up with her blankets, burying her face in the thick, fluffy fabric and inhaling the scent of it, proper detergent and the cocoa lotion she uses every night.

She feels refreshed. More so than she has for weeks. She had scraped by in that bane of a town on less than four hours a night, and what few hours she could get were always fitful. That lumpy, old excuse for a bed squeaked, most of her body ached from cleaning kitchens and loos and floors twelve hours a day, and the constant anxiety that this mysterious ‘Family’ would track them down plagued her nightmares. Add to that the unsettling visions of the naïve, airheaded human version of the Doctor bumbling around the school, romancing a matron he’d hardly just met, and you’ve got a recipe for insomnia.

She runs her hands back through her untamed, sleep-frizzed hair. It turns her stomach even now. He had so easily fallen for that stranger who had absolutely nothing to offer him. She wasn’t intelligent, or funny, or kind, and wasn’t much to look at (she hates to think such ill-mannered things, but Joan was so disrespectful to her, she doesn’t feel obligated to respect her from the privacy of her own head). And while he relentlessly wooed that horrid racist woman, he looked at her like she was the manure stuck on the bottom of his shoe. They both did.

The Doctor isn’t exactly a friendly man. He doesn’t like to talk, spurns her personal questions and masks his true emotions, and can be very cold if she accidentally crosses one of the invisible lines he’s drawn around their tenuous friendship. And more than once, when he’s scared for their safety or confronting an adversary, the power and fury contained in his deceptively lithe physique has properly frightened her.

But none of it has ever stopped her from loving him, because at the same time he’s so wonderful. Everything he does, he does because he _cares_. Cares for everyone he meets, in his own way. As much as he claims his race is superior to humans in so many ways, deep down he doesn’t really believe that. He consistently places the safety of the human race above his own; he’d take a bullet for a stranger without a moment’s hesitation.

But the human he turned himself into – John Smith – he was the polar opposite of the Doctor she knows. He was a coward, a whinger, and more than anything, a complete and total arsehole to her.

She shakes her head, clearing the negative thoughts from her mind. Best not to dwell on what happened. It was over, Joan was gone for good, and John Smith was history. She has to believe that he wasn’t the same man, even if he had the same face, because everything that man did contradicted the Doctor’s core values.

She climbs out of bed, steps into her fuzzy slippers, and heads into her en suite to freshen up. As the Doctor had said yesterday, time they moved on.

There’s a skip in her step as she makes her way down the winding hallway to the kitchen. She’s not a serving girl anymore, and the Doctor had promised they would visit a coastal town, on some planet that started with a ‘J’ today. He had offered a plethora of details about the destination, but the only ones she remembers are that it has white sand that shimmers like diamonds in the starlight, and the indigenous people are known to be some of the most beautiful in the universe.

Before she can sit down with her breakfast and tea, however (she’s back to her usual – two eggs over medium and whatever sausage and fruit they happen to have in stock that day), the Doctor strolls purposefully into the room.

“Oh,” she breathes. “Hello.”

He’s in his blue suit and her favorite deep red floral tie, his hair rebelling against gravity even more than usual, and she has to remind herself not to ogle. Or drool.

“Morning,” he mumbles. He hums absently and rubs the back of his neck, his eyes roaming over the room trying to find anywhere to look except her. His gaze eventually settles on the teapot, and he meanders over to pour himself a cuppa.

He rarely joins her for breakfast, usually opting instead to just meet her in the control room whenever she’s ready to leave for the day. He certainly does like his personal space. She tries not to seem too surprised by him dropping in, so rather than gape openly at him, she gives him a hesitant, confused smile as she sits down in front of her plate.

“So, uhm…” he clears his throat as he stirs his tea with more focus than is needed. “How are you this morning?”

“Good, thanks,” she answers, but her tone makes it sound more like a question than an response, like she isn’t sure if that’s the answer he’s looking for. “Slept wonderfully, for once, actually. You?” He never takes this type of question seriously, but she figures it’s worth trying, since he started it this time.

“Good, yeah.” He nods animatedly, and stirs his tea ever faster, metal clacking against ceramic loudly. “Brilliant.”

“Good.” She smiles at him, even though he’s still staring down at his mug.

There’s definitely something more to this visit than just a cup of tea. He never acts this jittery.

She shrugs to herself and scoops up a bite of egg and sausage. If he wants to say something, eventually he’ll come out with it, but it has to be on his own time, not hers.

He finally finishes over-stirring his tea and takes a sip from it silently, leaning against the counter with one foot crossed over the other. She’s about halfway through her breakfast when he finally breaks the silence.

“I wanted to apologize.”

She nearly chokes on her bite of strawberry.

She manages to swallow it down without needing the Heimlich, but stays silent. Lets him get it all out, whatever it is, before she says anything.

“For everything that happened. The more I think about it the more… unpleasant it gets.”

She wants to say it wasn’t his fault, but that’d be a lie. He was the one who wanted to hide away as a human in the first place and got them both into the whole mess. He continues when she doesn’t respond.

“Some of the things I said…” he trails off. Setting his mug down behind him, he squeezes his eyes shut with his thumb and index finger.

“That wasn’t you,” she interjects, because that much is not a lie. She still has faith that, aside from his face, that human man did not share any of the Doctor’s fundamental character traits.

“Well.” He cocks his head to side, and then sighs heavily. She knows how difficult this is for him, opening up about anything. With how often he says ‘sorry,’ it’s become almost a frivolous word to her, but right now, he isn’t saying it in passing, as a way to sweep emotional conversations under the rug. It really feels like he means it. She can see it in his face, in the way he looks both upset that for once he can’t be as laconic as he’d like, and nervous that she won’t forgive him. It’s in his stance, too, the way his feet are twitching like he’s prepared to flee the room any second. “ _He_ isn’t here to apologize.”

“True.” She smiles, trying to make light of the situation, hoping it’ll erase some of the stress from his features, but of course, it doesn’t. “Thank you,” she adds.

It does feel sinfully good to know she was right all along. The Doctor thinks of himself and John as two completely different entities, and feels the need to apologize for the former’s behavior.

“I’m sorry you lost Joan,” she says as a peace offering. The relief she feels from his apology is emboldening, and she wants to try to dig a little deeper.

“Don’t be.” He shakes his head, and his mouth turns down into a frown. The way his eyebrows pull together makes him look almost angry.

“But you… loved her.” She knows she shouldn’t be pressing it, pressing _him_ , but he’s never willing to talk about anything, and wants to take this chance while she has it to get _something_ out of him.

“I didn’t.” His tone leaves no room for argument.

“You said so yourself,” she counters.

Yes, he definitely looks angry now. She tries her best to look confused, rather than ecstatic at his denial.

“I thought I did,” he continues, less authoritative and more somber. “But that version of me was new to humanity. A slave to hormones. Pathetic,” he spits out.

“Not pathetic,” she tries to soothe the harshness his words bring to the atmosphere between them. “It’s tough, being human, you know.”

He sighs again, snuffing out his anger as he exhales.

“I know.” When he meets her eyes, she sees a flicker of sadness in his that quickly disappears when he speaks again. “But come on, he only knew her for a few weeks. It was infatuation, nothing more.” He’s doing it again, dissociating himself completely from his human incarnation. She can’t help it; she quite likes when he does that.

“Well, I don’t know. People can fall in love that fast.”

He scoffs. “Fall in lust, maybe.”

“You asked her to come with us,” she accuses. Lovely as it sounds to hear from him, it’s not adding up: what he’s saying now and what he did just before they left.

“John Smith left footprints.” He looks directly at her as he begins his explanation, didactic as ever, separating himself from every last trace of something so vulnerable as love. As wanting someone. He explains something about the biochemistry of the chameleon arch and the flaws in the design, the fragments that remain after the change. He compares it to how John had dreams about his life, dreamt about real people and places he’s known. “It was just residual emotions he had felt, that I was feeling. It took a few hours for his – his… misplaced affection to fade. That’s all.”

“Misplaced affection?” she echoes back to him, her eyebrows arching up. She can’t tell if it’s all true, or if he’s just saying whatever he can to make her believe he isn’t willing or able to love anyone in that way under any circumstances.

“It wasn’t love.”

“Oh, and you know what love is?” she asks. He doesn’t seem at all the type to fall in love, if she’s honest, this rude, calloused alien who blockades his two hearts against close relationships and has to have his true feelings steamrolled out of him.

The dead silence that follows her question makes her immediately regret asking it. His eyes darken, his body stiffens, and his jaw clenches with the raw emotion her words have sparked in him. And though he doesn’t express anything verbally, his reaction says all she needs to know. His face has a habit of doing that, saying things that he never would out loud. Sometimes his emotions really pin themselves to his sleeve, and it’s usually when he wants it the least.

He’s thinking about his mysterious Rose.

“Where is she, Doctor?” she asks. She doesn’t say her name, she’s learned that lesson by now. It only makes him angry when she says it, like he wants to protect that single syllable from ever being uttered by anyone but himself, as long as he lives. To knowingly provoke him would be superfluously insensitive; especially after the profound step he took coming in here to talk with her today.

“Gone,” he murmurs.

Before she can think of a way to ask how, he clears his throat and changes course completely.

“Anyway, all systems go,” he declares loudly. “Ready when you are. Jaxcopia,” he enunciates, lifting onto his toes in fabricated excitement. “See you in the console room when you’re finished.” He nods to her unfinished plate of food.

Abandoning his still-steaming, full cuppa on the counter, he stuffs his hands in his pockets and walks out the kitchen without another word.


End file.
